Classes >> Canine Good Citizen

Canine Good Citizen

Our Canine Good Citizen class is available to all dogs who have completed Puppy Kindergarten or Pet Obedience. Your dog doesn't have to already be a Canine Good Citizen to join the class! The purpose of this class is to take your dog to the next level of training, no matter where he currently is. It will also continue your dog's socialization, give you and your dog quality time together, and provide structure, guidance and real-life distractions to enhance your training effort.

Puppy Kindergarten and Pet Obedience give you the basic skills to train your dog to any level. Canine Good Citizen helps your dog reach more difficult levels of performance - Sit-Stay or Down-Stay for 1-3 minutes with you at a distance or out of the room, loose leash walking around other dogs and people, off-leash walking, coming when called away from play with other dogs. Almost all class time is spent directly on training and practice, with the instructor introducing activities to help train particular skills, and coaching participants to help the dogs progress. Participants should expect to have their dogs actively developing the skills they want to build, in an environment full of real-life challenges - other dogs, new people, distractions, outside, off-leash, etc.

This class is designed to be repeated, either in sequence or periodically as your dog needs additional training. As such, there is no formal class outline that defines exactly what you'll experience week-to-week. As a matter of fact, if you're repeating the class, we'll try extra hard to be sure you have new training activities each week! As always, we customize this class to the specific training needs of the participants, and encourage your questions.

This class is named after the American Kennel Club's (AKC's) Canine Good Citizen (CGC) program. The purpose of the AKC program is to encourage pet owners to have well-mannered pets. There are 10 areas addressed by the AKC program and trained in this class:

1. Accepting a friendly stranger - If a person approaches and greets you in a friendly manner, your dog should respond politely without jumping up, running away, or aggressing
2. Sitting politely for petting
3. Calmly accepting grooming and handling
4. Sit and Down on command, Stay
5. Coming when called
6. Loose leash walking with stops, sits and turns on your cue
7. Loose leash walking through a crowd of people and dogs
8. Politely meeting another dog and its owner during a walk - staying with you and not "visiting"
9. Appropriate reaction to distractions - If your dog is startled by noises or unusual sights, he should quickly recover and calm down. He should not be terrified or aggressive
10. Supervised separation - Your dog should "hang out" calmly without whining or pulling if left on leash with a friendly stranger for 3 minutes

If you would like to take just the test you may do so when we offer the test to one of our Canine Good Citizenship Classes for a charge of $10.

Although the primary focus of our Obedience program is well-mannered pets, this class is an excellent foundation for dogs who want to progress to Obedience competition, field trials or other work. Passing the CGC test is typically a prerequisite for certification by Therapy Dog organizations. For class members who want to proceed to these other areas, we have first-hand experience with Obedience competition, Therapy Dog work, some Service Dog work, and Agility. We also know how to train many of the specific skills needed for other areas. We'll be glad to guide you and your dog toward your goals!